Say My Name

Thirteen months after I leave the UK, a former student finally works up the courage to ask the big question: Cute.

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Zou Hoo

Lots of football to watch today:

Mizzou v Illinois @ Edward Jones Dome
"Remember when the St. Louis Rams were the 'Greatest Show on Turf?' [Mizzou's] Chase Daniel and Jeremy Maclin are about to put on the greatest show that dome has seen since." -Stewart Mandel's College Picks.

USC @ UVA
Well, my poor Wahoos aren't expected to win, but I hope the Good Ole Song can be sung at least once:


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A Dirty Old Man

"Regina Spektor ... I knew her when she was a little girl. Now she's a big girl ... and really hot." -apparently the singer was a childhood friend to my professor's daughter.
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Casual Friday Everyday

"David Banuser of Binghams [CoMo's posh clothing shop] says it's generally accepted that Columbia is about two years behind trends that emerge on the east coast." -excerpt from Vox Magazine. Well that explains why I sometimes feel like the best dressed person in the entire state of Missouri.
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Hot in Here

"It gets hot in here, like a sauna. But that's okay, you'll lose weight." -Professor Grinfeld, making us not feel so bad about sweating profusely in his class.
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Midwest Impressions

G-chat convo with a friend from Indiana (who has traded in mid-western life for more exciting times in DC):

WJS: everyone here is CRAZY about football, it's pretty funny
CM: yeh that's what it is all about football, basketball and beer. politics is a distant 4th
WJS: i drove through indiana on the way here and thought of you
CM: what part of Indiana? did you see all the small towns and funny looking people?
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Virginia Girls

"I can't wait to hear all your stories, although I'm sure none will top those from UVA - it's hard to compare to perfection." -so true, Meg (and thanks for my first real letter in Missouri!). Wahoowa.
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Heaven Forbid

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Shrouded

"The human heart has hidden treasures,
In secret kept, in silence sealed;
The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures,
Whose charms were broken if revealed.”
-Charlotte Bronte reference in Definitely, Maybe, which I watched last night (love those romantic comedies...).
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Mystery of the Day

“Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge.” -Winston Churchill quote on a card accompanying flowers from an unknown sender. Anyone want to confess?
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Too Old

"Guys with grey hair can't go to bars with graduate students. I learned that the hard way." -a (quite old) professor politely refuses an invite to go out for a drink.
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Rumor Has It

"Every time a virgin walks between the lions, they roar." -a dean explains the rumor behind two statues given to the J-School by the Chinese National Government in 1931.
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Be Prepared

"Grad school is not a refuge from life, it is instead life intensified." -an MU provost warns us about the years ahead at yesterday's grad student orientation.
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Feed Me

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TJ's Tombstone

"The obelisk ... commemorates Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States, whose faith in the future of western America and whose confidence in the people has shaped our national ideals; commemorates the author of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, founder of the University of Virginia, fosterer of public education in the United States." -plaque below Jefferson's tombstone, originally placed at his grave at Monticello in 1826, but moved to Missouri in 1883 because Mizzou was the first state university founded in the Louisiana Territory (purchased under Jefferson's administration).

There's your history lesson for the day :)
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Making A Splash

"Phelps lends a new spin to the phrase 'Breakfast of Champions' by starting off his day by eating three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise. He follows that up with two cups of coffee, a five-egg omelet, a bowl of grits, three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar and three chocolate-chip pancakes." -Oh, to be an Olympian. Read more here.
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Bay To Breakers

"It's a 12k run though SF. However, the majority of participants just show up and walk the run into Golden Gate Park, dressed in costumes and drinking heavily. Anyways, some people were holding up 'pro-walking' signs which were pretty funny. I know that your blog has a quite obvious (at least to the discerning reader) pro-runner stance, however I feel that in our current political climate, it may be good to demonstrate your journalistic integrity by featuring all of the angles and sides of the walk/run debate." -good call, Beth (and thanks for the photos!) :)
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And So It Begins...

Headed to Missouri today (arriving tomorrow) . . .

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Think for Yourself

"believe nothing,
no matter where you read it
or who has said it,
not even if i have said it,
unless it agrees with
your own reason and
your own common sense."

-buddha
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Land of Opportunity

"There is so much money on the ground in this country!" -a tourist's exclamation as he picks up a penny on the sidewalk.

This guy must be more lucky than me...
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Change

"Nothing remains forever, everything changes, which is good. We should all learn to thrive and take advantage of the power of change. It has amazing potential and by learning to cope with it we can become strong, balanced and contributing human beings." -good advice from a good friend in Sweden. Important to remember in these last few days before moving to the mid-west...
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On the Moove

"The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle." -Baron de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games (1890).

I'm running the Leesburg 10k this morning. Not quite the Olympics, but it will do for now (hey, a t-shirt with a cow on it is almost as cool as a gold medal...and I hear there's free ice cream afterwards!).

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Stanford, CA

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City of Brotherly Love

"The Constitution was written by 55 educated and highly intelligent men in Philadelphia in 1787, but it was written so that it could be understood by people of limited education and modest intelligence." -John Jay Hooker

Philly till tomorrow.

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Washington, D.C.

"It's an incredible city ... but there's no place to park." -a tourist on his cell phone, near the National Mall yesterday.
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Busted

"People in this country don't know what jail is. If you want a real jail, go to f*ck*ng Mexico. The jails there only have two doors. The first one you go in alive. The second one you go out dead. And there's a lot of gang violence in between." -apparently one of the trainers at my gym is an "expert" in the Mexican prison system (my guess is that a lot of his friends are serving time).
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Berkeley, CA

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Chinatown ATM

Dip it!
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All You Need

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Read All About It

"Death came quickly and prematurely for about 700 turkeys on their way to be slaughtered when a semitrailer overturned early Wednesday." -breaking news and high-quality journalism from the Brunswick Star-News.
Best headline from yesterday's paper: "S.C. man spends 12 hours trapped under trash bin." The best part about this story was the Wizard Of Oz-like photo of the man's feet poking out below a dumpster (unfortunately not available online). Why is this paper even shipped to BHI?
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Burning Up

"It's funny - you don't remember to stop, drop and roll when you're actually on fire." -Jackson relates last summer's accident to friends at Eb & Flo's last night.
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